


the burden of my song

by kayura_sanada



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur Pendragon/Guinevere (Main Canon Ship), But I Made It The Main Ship Because The Whole Story is From Merlin's POV, Canon Compliant, Depressing, F/M, Lancelot/Guinevere (Also Unrequited), M/M, Not A Fix-It, PLEASE READ THESE TAGS FIRST!!!, SUPER DEPRESSING, Sad Ending, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The Merlin/Arthur Pendragon is Unrequited, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 11:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16084763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayura_sanada/pseuds/kayura_sanada
Summary: Everyone’s born with a line of a poem that links them to their soulmate. But there are only so many poems. Repeats are inevitable.





	the burden of my song

**Author's Note:**

> Happy ten year anniversary to one of the most depressing endings to a TV show I have ever had the misfortune to watch.

Merlin’s mother had once said that the world was very large. Larger than he could imagine. So large that there had to be thousands, millions of thousands, of people roaming around it. “That little mark on your arm,” she said, pointing to the words that had been with him since the day he’d been born, “is just one of thousands and thousands and thousands.”

He’d frowned, little lip quivering. “Then how do I find them?”

Hunith had smiled. “I have a theory,” she said, holding up a finger. He couldn’t help staring at her own arm, on which her own words shone. Hers were a bit lower down than his, necessitating a band whenever she went outside. “I think there’s more than one person with those words on you.” Merlin’s eyes widened. “They’ll match you, little Merlin, and every heart that does will be special to you. From them, you can choose which one you love.”

He looked back at the words on his arm. They’d been the first words he’d ever learned to read, begging his mother every day to read and re-read it to him, until he could do the same. He looked back to it now, frowning. He didn’t know how he felt about that. “I thought it was soulmates,” he said, moving his still chubby fingers to trace the lines.

“Yes. But why have only one?”

He looked up at her. “Did you only have one?” he asked, thinking of his unknown father. The question, as every one about his father did, made the smile dim from her face. He bit his lip, wanting to take the question back.

“Yes,” she said, her voice very soft. “Just the one.”

Just his dad. Then why would she say otherwise?

He hadn’t understood that decision. Not for a very, very long time. After all, he’d been just a kid, and love had still seemed to be something so amazing and beautiful and perfect, all bright lights and sappy smiles. Even with his mother never talking about his father, even with her looking sad every time he tried, he still thought love would be wonderful when he found it, because otherwise, what was the point?

* * *

Arthur had been changing when he’d seen it.

His words were splashed in a rare spot in the middle of his back, a place too often brandished in front of Merlin’s face as he helped Arthur dress or took off his armor, his sweaty shirt riding up as he yanked the metal plates off. The first time he’d seen it, he’d averted his gaze, thinking it too intimate. But after several months of working under the prince and the two becoming close, it had become harder and harder to look away, until finally he asked, “are you all right with me seeing your stanza?”

To which Arthur had snorted and replied, “have you only just learned to read, _Mer_ lin?”

So Merlin read it. And gasped. He’d started coughing, nearly choking on his own spit. Arthur hadn’t been amused. “Is something funny?” Arthur asked, his tone of voice the one that promised a day in the stocks.

“No,” Merlin choked, then again, a bit breathier, “no.” Almost, he reached up and traced the curvature of those scrawled letters. Almost, he thumbed the phrases that matched too closely to his own to be coincidence.

He still didn’t believe in fate, and he still thought Arthur was a prat. But, for the first time, he wondered if perhaps Arthur might also be _more_.

* * *

“Love me little, more than such,” Freya read, her fingers gentle as she held his arm still so she could read, twisting it a bit as the words bent around his skin, “for I fear the end: I am with little well content, and a little from thee sent is enough, with true intent, to be steadfast friend.” She let him go, and he curled his arm to his chest, feeling more vulnerable, almost injured, than he’d ever felt. She gave him a tiny smile. “It sounds sad.”

He thought so, too. “I think it means that I want a calm, enduring love.” He smiled softly. “Maybe with you.”

She smiled back, her cheeks tinging pink. She rubbed her own arm. Her words, short and sweet, were on her wrist. They did not match his.

He went back to her, again and again, speaking softly through the night, sharing magic and laughter. Every time, Freya took to sliding her fingers up and down the inside of her wrist, following line after line of her poem. Sometimes, while they sat quiet beside one another, absorbing the presence of an understanding soul, he saw her mouth move, reciting the last lines on her skin.

_Better by far you should forget and smile  
Than that you should remember and be sad._

The day came when Freya was no longer his chance to escape the one he couldn’t be with, the one whose words his matched so forthrightly. The day came when the one he loved and the one he wished he loved met, the night like a cloak upon them, and come the dawn, only one remained.

It was his destiny to love Arthur. His destiny would allow no escape.

He mourned. He mourned, and remembered, and wept.

* * *

Shyly, Gwen showed him the words on her calf. The edge of her dress, curled up into her fists as she leaned her leg forward for his gaze, sat like spun sunlight in the empty expanse of Morgana’s room. “His and mine match,” she whispered, and Merlin paled. He’d expected to see some poem he’d never seen before, as he had when Freya had shown him her words. Instead he saw a cadence he recognized as if it was his heartbeat, and words he felt a kinship with like never before.

They matched Merlin’s. And, as they matched Merlin’s, they matched, not Lancelot’s, but Arthur’s.

His heart broke.

* * *

He and Lancelot sat beside one another, the firelight from their campfire beating upon their backs. Lancelot’s head hung low, his fingers clenched in tight fists. “Her words match Arthur’s,” Lancelot said, his voice low.

Merlin was silent for several heartbeats before he said, very quietly, “I know.”

Lancelot looked at him. At the shadows permanently haunting his eyes. He nodded. “I have to leave.”

Merlin’s heart thundered. Here was his closest friend, the only one who knew all of him. He reached out. “Your… your words. Are they not…” He didn’t know how to ask, yet he didn’t have to. A soft rustle as Lancelot shifted on the grass, and the man was rolling up his shirt. Merlin stilled. “Are you sure?” he whispered.

“I want you to know.”

Merlin sucked in a breath.

 _Nay, and after death, in sooth,_  
_I to thee will keep my truth,_  
 _As now, when in my May of youth,_  
 _This my love assures._

They matched. Once again, that cadence, those words. Merlin closed his eyes. “Lancelot–”

“I know.”

Merlin opened his eyes again. Lance’s lips were set, firm, straight. His gaze was hooded. Merlin looked back down at the words, his fingers trembling as he dared reach up and touch. His eyes burned.

“She’s chosen, Merlin. Isn’t that why you haven’t said anything? Because Arthur chose, as well?”

Merlin snapped his gaze up. The look Lance gave him came with a small, sad smile. Merlin turned away. “I wish…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“I know.”

He looked at his words, tracing the pattern he’d seen so often now. On himself. On Arthur. On Gwen. And now, on Lance. They were supposed to all have someone! he wanted to shout. If only Arthur hadn’t chosen Gwen. If only Gwen hadn’t chosen Arthur. ‘You can choose which one you love,’ his mother had said, and he’d wished he’d chosen Lance.

They leaned against one another for a few minutes longer, both soaking in each others’ presence. But all too soon, Lancelot stood up and grabbed his things. Merlin watched him leave, watched him walk away, and wished he could do the same.

He looked at Arthur, lying still in his cot, face turned toward Gwen’s blankets, hand slightly outstretched as if to reach for her.

He wished he could carve the words from his skin.

* * *

_Still, I would not have thee cold,  
_ _Not too backward, nor too bold;  
Love that lasteth till ‘tis old_   
_Fadeth not in haste._   
_Love me little, love me long,_   
_Is the burden of my song._

Merlin framed the words carefully, wrapping the adornments around Arthur’s chest, the small opening in his garments that framed the words carefully stiffened at the shoulders so that it would not hide the words when the time came. Finished, he took a single step back. “Thank you, Merlin,” Arthur said, mind somewhere else as he checked himself one last time. Merlin kept silent, afraid of what might happen if he tried to speak. Arthur glanced at him. “What’s wrong with you? You’ve been quiet all morning.”

“Nothing,” he said, and took a deep breath. He tried to smile. Knowing the attempt had failed, he instead turned around to check the hallway. Clear. “Just excited. There’s gonna be cake, yeah?”

“ _Mer_ lin, you are not going to ruin my wedding by eating the cake early.”

He swallowed back the flinch, the pain, the near despair, and turned wide eyes on Arthur. “Of course not! That’s why I’m trying to get this to hurry up!”

Arthur huffed. His lips pressed tight together to hide the smile. “Really, Merlin! This is a royal wedding!”

“And I’m happy for you,” he said, pushing every last vestige of truth left in the words until they felt like they stung the tongue. “Really, I am. But _cake_ , Arthur! Cake!”

This time Arthur really did laugh. “That’s it. I’m going to demand the solemnizer speak slowly and succinctly.” He smirked at Merlin’s aggrieved look. “Maybe then you’ll realize that this is a _serious_ matter.”

Oh, he knew. He knew.

He cleared his throat. “And _then_ cake?”

* * *

He saw Lancelot again after Arthur and Gwen were officially married. Like Merlin, Lance did his hardest not to think about it. Once, only once, Merlin asked, when they were alone, if Gwen knew. Lance had nodded. “She only saw after she’d seen Arthur’s,” he’d said, and Merlin had closed his eyes, unable to bear the weight of that knowledge. Some part of him had hoped they’d both been unaware. Had hoped that they’d chosen one another because they hadn’t seen anyone else. “You?” Lancelot had asked.

Merlin had shook his head, unable to say anything. But Lancelot had understood. They’d never brought it up again.

For months, the two took solace in one another. They stayed together when the knowledge got too heavy, too painful; many nights were spent alone, silent, each drifting in their own thoughts, both choosing to not think of Gwen or Arthur. Those nights were the closest Merlin got to peace some days, when Arthur and Gwen were a little too happy, when the brightness of their love cast Merlin into deep, dark shadow. Those nights reminded him that he wasn’t alone, that heartbreak never killed. When morning came, he could pretend that Arthur and Gwen happy was all he ever needed, and could return to being Arthur’s friend.

Those nights ended with the Dorocha.

He never knew that simple, solid serenity again.

* * *

He’d believed it his destiny to end the way Lancelot had. Lancelot, his body brought back from his eternal rest only once, only enough for Arthur to see what Gwen and Merlin had already seen – the words etched on Lance’s side, the words Merlin had read that dark night when it was clear that Arthur loved Gwen and Gwen Arthur, and Merlin was to be nothing more than _steadfast friend._

For years and years, it had become his mantra. ‘It is my destiny to die protecting Arthur.’ He almost wanted it to be so. Not that he wanted to die – his friendship with Arthur was nothing like what he’d wanted, but it was long, and enduring, and perhaps his poem had been a warning, but he wouldn’t trade Arthur for the world. So he was happy to stay by Arthur’s side as his friend and his servant, his shadow and confidante. So long as he gave his life to Arthur, his love wouldn’t be a waste.

He bent his head over Arthur’s pale, still form, and cried.

It was supposed to be him.

* * *

Only one stood in Camelot still bearing a stanza from that poem. Only one stood, her head held high, her one leg deliberately bare as she watched the funeral procession from beneath a black veil. The entire world could read the proof of her and Arthur’s devotion on her very skin, the promise she had made to him, and he to her, when they’d first traded their vows. “Say thou lov’st me while thou live,” she whispered. “I to thee my love will give, never dreaming to deceive whiles that life endures.”

She would carry him and Camelot forward. They had been, after all, meant to be.

* * *

Centuries later, Merlin looked toward the hill where Arthur’s body had drifted, where the waters waited to be wakened, if ever; trucks passed by, ruffling his gray and ratted hair. His fingers curled around the bags in his hands.

“Love me little, love me long,” the wind sang.

That is the burden of my song.

**Author's Note:**

> Poems used:
> 
> “Love Me Little, Love Me Long” by Anonymous  
> “Remember” by Christina Rossetti


End file.
